Does Balance of Multilingual Exposure Impact Gesture Comprehension in Autistic Children?

This study explores whether and how balance of multilingual exposure (BME) impacts gesture comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Eighty-six autistic children (aged 4-12 years) varying in their balance of exposure to different languages completed a gamified task assessing the comprehension of deictic, iconic, and conventional gestures presented in four communicative modalities: (a) gesture presented alone (e.g., gesturing DRIVE), (b) with reinforcing speech (e.g., gesturing DRIVE and saying "driving"), (c) with supplementing speech (e.g., gesturing DRIVE and saying "lady"), compared to (d) speech alone (e.g., saying "driving"). A BME score reflected the participants' balance of exposure to more than one language since birth, based on parental reports.

Overall, children with ASD performed well on the task (i.e., above chance level). Accounting for age, biological sex, socioeconomic status, autism severity, nonverbal IQ and general language skills, mixed-effects logistic regressions showed no differential effect of BME on the comprehension of deictic, iconic, and conventional gestures. Age and language skills were significant independent positive predictors of the performance, highlighting the maturating process of gesture comprehension over time on the one hand, and reflecting the importance of language for gesture comprehension on the other.

This preliminary study paves the way for future research exploring the impact of multilingualism on the gesture comprehension abilities of individuals with ASD and provides new evidence suggesting that multilingual exposure is not detrimental to their communicative development.